


Sony SRF-39FP

by FrivolousSuits



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe- Harvey Goes to Prison, Angst, Depersonalization, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Illness, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prison, Solitary Confinement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 18:31:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12090897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrivolousSuits/pseuds/FrivolousSuits
Summary: Anita Gibbs won’t settle for Mike, not when there are name partners within her reach. She offers only one deal– two years, no other charges against anyone else in the firm, as long as Harvey Specter turns himself in. And even as Donna and Jessica and Louis and Mike beg him not to, he jumps on the grenade.“Time to get busy living or get busy dying,” he remarks, and Mike gives a small chuckle. Then Harvey smirks, straightens his suit jacket, and strides into FCI Danbury.





	Sony SRF-39FP

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to statusquo_ergo, whose research and brainstorming help was invaluable through the process of writing this fic.
> 
> Please make sure to check out the warnings before reading, since this fic's content is potentially upsetting.

Anita Gibbs won’t settle for Mike, not when there are name partners within her reach. She offers only one deal– two years, no other charges against anyone else in the firm, as long as Harvey Specter turns himself in. And even as Donna and Jessica and Louis and Mike beg him not to, he jumps on the grenade.

“Time to get busy living or get busy dying,” he remarks, and Mike gives a small chuckle. Then Harvey smirks, straightens his suit jacket, and strides into FCI Danbury.

* * *

See, Harvey’s not so naive as to think prison, even a low-security dump like Danbury, will be a cakewalk. But he knows that he’ll be judged from the moment he steps foot inside, and that he’ll need to keep up a steely poker face, and that he’ll likely have to manipulate a bunch of white-collar criminals and “officers of the law” into doing his bidding, and that he’ll have to fight simultaneous wars with everyone around him, and it doesn’t feel all that different from Monday morning in the office.

He arrives on a Monday afternoon and receives a copy of the prison regulations and meets with the counselor, a slippery character who feeds Harvey a long spiel on how imprisonment is an opportunity for self-improvement. Harvey decides not to rely on him for anything.

His first night in prison is unexpectedly quiet. His cellmate doesn’t have much to say about himself or anything to ask about him, which Harvey thinks is fine for now. At a later date, though, he intends to pry more information out of him and find out why their cell smells like a rotting orchard.

On Tuesday morning, Harvey wakes with his cellmate at an ungodly hour and is momentarily reminded of his sleepless associate days, and he allows himself one self-indulgent sigh before pulling himself out of bed. Since he’s been assigned Tuesday as his shopping day, he heads to the commissary as soon as he can.

Though he made sure to fill his prison account up to the $320 limit, he starts off frugal, picking up just enough stamps and stationery to mail out forms to potential visitors– they need to sign releases allowing the prison to run background checks on them before they can come visit. Once he seals all the envelopes and drops the forms off in the mail depository, he returns to the commissary and contemplates what else to buy, maybe soap or toothpaste or–

“Reese’s Pieces.”

He spins around to find a hulking inmate behind him, entirely too close for comfort, and says, “What did you say?”

“You’re going to take your full account,” the man growls, “and you’re going to buy me a bag of Reese’s Pieces.”

“I’ve got less than 10 bucks in my account,” Harvey bluffs.

“Now you’re just asking for trouble.”

Harvey straightens up and looks him in the eye, because he can’t set precedent by rolling over on his second day. He puts on his best de-escalation voice and says, “Let’s back up for a second and see if we can work out a deal–”

He’s cut off by a fist in the face.

He’s bleeding everywhere, but Harvey ignores it and dodges another hit before throwing a solid punch of his own. A guard storms over to break up the brawl and sweep Harvey off to the infirmary, where he swears up and down that he’s not concussed. No, he’s not dizzy. No, he’s not unusually sleepy. Yes, he remembers his name and who he is.

He is confused, though, because while he knew fights break out over nothing in prison he doesn’t usually misjudge a potential opponent so badly. Instead of fighting they should have reached a mutually agreeable settlement– trading chocolate for information, perhaps.

His nose, fortunately unbroken, stops gushing soon enough, and he rinses the blood from his face and spits it from his mouth. An hour later, an officer shows up and leads him back out.

After a few minutes, Harvey realizes he’s never been down these passages before. “Where are you taking me?”

He doesn’t receive an answer.

* * *

He winds up in Special Housing Unit 5, one of Danbury’s solitary confinement cells. He demands to know why he’s here and is told he’ll receive an explanation on schedule. The steel door slams shut as Harvey swallows down a quip about how he’s always been special.

After looking briefly out the small, square window in the door he takes stock of his cell. It’s half the size of his old office, maybe less, with walls that manage to look dingy and overwhelmingly white at the same time. There’s a thin charcoal gray mattress against one wall, a long flickering light set into the ceiling above it, and a metal sink attached to a toilet stands in the other half of the room. Otherwise, the room is brutally plain and drafty, and it stinks suspiciously of industrial strength cleaner.

When the steel door slams shut, Harvey groans and lies down on the mattress. It has less give than a slab of rock, but he falls asleep nonetheless.

* * *

Early the next morning, the light glares with particular brilliance in Harvey’s eyes just as a bizarre racket grows outside his door, and he wakes with a start. Heart pounding, he shoots to his feet and looks through the window, but he can’t see much, besides the door of the cell across from him rattling as–

As the inmate inside Unit 4 repeatedly bangs his forehead into the window.

Startled, Harvey jumps back, even as the inmates on either side of his cell join in the chaos, hollering and hammering on the walls and doors. The din intensifies when a guard turns the corner and walks down the hall to Harvey’s room, holding a piece of paper.

Turns out it’s the promised explanation for his placement in segregation. He’s not here for any disciplinary reason– instead, he’s in “Administrative Segregation,” separated from the general prison population for his own protection. The form reports that multiple guards and inmates saw Harvey get beaten up, and the facts are all correct, though the implication that he was some sort of damsel in distress rankles.

He considers asking for an immediate hearing to discuss his placement in SHU but then thinks better of it. He’ll wait until Friday, when Mike promised to visit, come hell or high water.

He can wait until then.

* * *

Harvey keeps track of time by when meals come, but in between he finds himself slipping. He tries to scowl at the flickering light, as if he can intimidate it into settling on a particular brightness. It doesn’t.

Come Friday morning, there’s supposedly an administrative review of his documents, but he doesn’t hear anything about it– for all he knows, the official’s eating donuts and using his records to mop up the powdered sugar. But he pushes that out of his mind as soon as a guard arrives at his door to inform him he has a visitor.

When he steps into the Attorney/Client Room, he finds Mike there, dressed in a three-piece suit, brusquely thanking the guard for bringing his client out promptly, the model of a perfect businessman. Then the guard leaves, and there’s an odd, bare moment as they look at each other, emotion jamming both their throats.

“How are you?” Mike finally says.

“To be frank, I’ve been better,” he answers. “Managed to get thrown in ad seg already.”

“Ad seg? You mean ‘Administrative Segregation’?”

“Yeah.”

Mike’s expression darkens. “Why? Was there a threat against you?”

“Just some guy throwing a tantrum over Reese’s Pieces,” he says, snorting at the absurdity. “Felt like I was back with Louis, arguing over whether lime juice improves a mud bath.”

“But did you get the guy’s name?”

“Yeah, it was in the write-up– a Neal Rawn. I’ve never met him before.”

Mike grimaces. “Actually, you have.”

“What?”

“He was an exec at Sagittarius Financial, until you–”

“Bullied them into firing half their senior people,” he finishes. “That was ages ago, right after I made junior partner.”

“Well,” Mike sighs, “I’ve been looking up people you’ve gone up against in your career, along with some people whom Donna says you’ve tangled with personally– everyone who’s ended up convicted with federal charges that’d lead to imprisonment in a low-security joint like this.”

“And?”

“The preliminary results are that half of Danbury has some reason to hold a grudge against you, Harvey.”

“So what, I belong in seg?”

“No,” Mike replies with surprising speed. “I think you should put in an appeal to get out of solitary, and then we should stay in contact and handle things as they come up. You meet someone you think could be an ally, you run them by me first, and I’ll get you their life history.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too.”

“And who knows?” Mike shrugs. “You might find some people in here you’ve helped at some point. Incidentally, of course. You’ve never actually cared about anyone enough to help on purpose.”

“Never,” Harvey repeats with a chuckle.

They make plans to meet again soon, and then Harvey returns to his cell and requests a hearing, “per part B of section 541.28 in the SHU program statement.”

“Fine, Specter, you’ll get your hearing tomorrow.”

* * *

The next morning, he’s informed that the guards have conducted an extensive investigation that revealed he is in no danger and does not require segregation, and he is unceremoniously dropped back at his usual cell.

He’s grateful to be back among the general population, out of the stifling cell and away from that damn light, and he does his best to start fresh. Over the next few weeks, he perfects the art of avoiding eye contact, avoiding trouble, without appearing servile.

He navigates prison life with relative ease. On his very first day back from solitary, he obtains the explanation for his cell’s pungent smell– turns out his cellmate’s brewing “pruno,” an alcoholic concoction made from bread and oranges and ketchup, and while Harvey would rather drink a prunie, or Drano for that matter, he respects his bravery. Since all medically fit inmates are required to find employment, Harvey manages to talk his way into the most coveted job in Danbury, a position with UNICOR, which employs prisoners to make goods for the U.S. government. In his spare hours he reads the _New York Times_ – old subscription, new address– and plays games with the deck of cards he bought from the commissary, drawing up paper tokens for blackjack and poker. Gambling is a Moderate severity prohibited act, and while he could probably get away with betting candy or something else real he’s still wary enough not to bother.

People ask about his crime fairly often, and he honestly tells them he’s in here for impersonation, figuring it’s better to confess up front rather than wreck his credibility by lying and later being found out. When they ask other questions, he deflects and redirects, doling out information like currency as he has his entire life.

When people dig deeper, he gives them partial answers and half-truths.

“So who’d you impersonate?”

“I didn’t do the impersonating,” Harvey says. “I just drummed up business for the guy who did.”

“Is he in here too?”

A shake of his head.

“Wow, slippery bastard. Why’d you help him?”

“He was pretending to be a lawyer. I was a lawyer too, but sometimes I needed his help. It was convenient.”

It’s nothing but the truth, even if it reveals nothing of their reality.

In reality, Mike shows up every weekend, whether it’s convenient for him or not, and Harvey calls him regularly through the week. Mike collaborates with Vanessa to check up on every inmate he’s trying to form alliances with, to confirm that they’re really who they say and that they’re not particularly likely to stab Harvey in the back. Thus Harvey amasses a motley mix of contacts– forgers, embezzlers, blackmailers, witness tamperers, and that one guy doing six months for the transportation of water hyacinths. He helps with legal issues, he purchases loyalty with Oreos and UNO decks, and he makes sure they understand he’s doing them a favor, not because he’s scared of them, but because he might want to use them one day.

He doesn’t genuinely like any of them.

The only thing he really likes in prison is the Sony SRF-39FP he buys from the commissary, choosing an old-fashioned analog radio over the MP3s. It’s a box that fits neatly in his palm, with a hardy cover made of clear plastic to prevent inmates from smuggling contraband. Harvey sees all its inner workings, coiled and intricate yet strangely bare, able to run for forty hours on a single battery, and he feels an odd kinship with it. Then he finds WPUT, a station dedicated largely to jazz, and he’s damn near in love.

* * *

Some days are harder than others.

Harvey finds himself biting his tongue, biting down on the irritation that grips his chest. Every night, he has to actively work to sleep, because he ends every day wired, though whether from fear or stress or simple excitement he couldn’t say. Fights explode all around him for every reason, using every imaginable weapon– razors and forks, of course, but also sharpened spoons and pencils, and he hears someone in the block’s been fusing wet newspapers together and letting them dry into a solid block and carving an entire armory out of it.

It doesn’t help that the guards are keeping an unusually close eye on him, scolding him for minor infractions that other inmates get away with regularly, treating him like a notorious troublemaker.

Hoping for a slice of normalcy, Harvey calls people from his life before. Marcus tries to act normal and comically fails, stumbling around the fact that his brilliant, successful big brother is a fraud and bemoaning the fact that his underage gambling record has kept him from visiting in person. Then there’s Jessica, who speaks to him in vague terms to keep from breaking privilege now that he’s no longer at the firm but tells him just enough to suggest Pearson Litt is on the verge of collapse. He learns that she and Louis are doing the work of three senior partners each, and that Rachel has quadrupled her caseload, and that Mike has been reclassified as a paralegal and is now filling in for _ten_ paralegals. She frequently hangs up early to take business calls, leaving him halfway through a sentence, and he doesn’t complain. It’s his fault, after all.

He calls Donna, and she quickly perceives that he doesn’t want to talk about prison, not with the prison listening in. So she tells him about herself, about how she and Benjamin and Louis have initiated a brand-new technological venture, and they all sound so hopeful and confident that he feels a flare of resentment. He stops calling as often. If he lashes out and ruins his relationship with Donna, he won’t forgive himself.

He feels the resentment everyday. It simmers just under his skin as he slaves away at his UNICOR job, making shirts for military uniforms, earning mere cents every hour. It swells up every time his sewing machine gets stuck, every time his thread breaks. Sometimes he has to clench his fists to keep from hurling the damn machine into the wall.

The only thing that reliably soothes him is remembering that Mike’s next visit is less than seven days away.

* * *

“You look tired,” Mike observes at the start of one visit.

He tries to shrug and play it cool, but Mike adds, “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Nothing new to report.”

There’s a shout in the main visiting room outside, as the chaos of the prison encroaches on even this, their small sanctuary, and Harvey’s eyes flicker up on instinct. Mike keeps talking, but he’s not hearing–

“Harvey?”

“Yeah?”

“I was saying that Jessica’s got an offer with Kirkland & Ellis. Share partner in the Chicago office, which is . . . pretty damn amazing.” Mike falls silent for a moment. “Okay, what are you actually thinking about?”

“The guards have it in for me.”

“Harvey–”

“What the hell were they doing, putting me in ad seg on day 2? And I’m not crazy, they are watching me, more than other guys who’ve caused a hell of a lot more trouble–”

“I believe you.”

Harvey’s mouth slams shut.

“I just– I’m looking, Harvey. The trouble is that basically all of New York’s white collar criminals end up here, which means most of Danbury has dealt with you and might hate you. Throw in the fact that someone could be bribing the guards from outside . . .” Mike trails off.

“And anyway this comes second,” Harvey supplies. “I get that the firm’s the priority right now.”

“Actually, you’ve been my priority. Jessica and Rachel aren’t too thrilled with me, but if Jessica leaves for Chicago I can’t see how it matters . . .” He sighs. “Hey, the New York Bar sent a letter on your disciplinary measures.”

Though Harvey’s expected the letter ever since he pled guilty, he tightens his jaw on instinct as Mike explains further.

“Basically, they’re suspending your license for now, and they’ll decide on the final penalty at a hearing when you get out. Louis convinced them to deduct the time between now and then from your penalty, if they ultimately decide to punish you with suspension. Now, I know it’s way too early, but I did some preliminary research on disciplinary hearings so we can build your case–”

“Nice gesture, but we all know I’m headed straight for disbarment.” When Mike starts to protest, he adds, “You want to tell me otherwise, oh learned paralegal?”

It’s needlessly cruel, and Mike deserves better, and if Harvey were in his place he’d be walking out right now and taking the research with him. But Mike just raises an eyebrow and hands over the letter and the thick research packet. “The odds aren’t great, but you’ve never been about playing the odds anyway. I figured if anyone has a chance it’s you.”

Harvey doesn’t have anything to say to that.

“I brought something else, too, stumbled across it in the PL law library. I’m sure you’re a little low on space in your cell, but you are technically allowed to keep three cubic feet of legal material and I’ve only given you two at the most, so I figured why not?” He pulls out a green Barbri handbook, the same one Harvey brought to his associate interviews all those years back. “I thought if you wanted some pleasure reading–”

“An out-of-date book for 1Ls is the way to go,” Harvey says, but his voice is gentler now.

“Forgive me if I haven’t pinned down your reading tastes yet, for all I know you love chick lit–”

“Jesus.”

“Or romance novels. Is E.L. James your favorite novelist?”

“Let’s stick to the Barbri handbook, no other gifts necessary.”

Harvey grabs the book, and he doesn’t let go until he stashes it safely in his cell.

* * *

He doesn’t expect Mike to come until Sunday this week, yet he receives a visitor on Saturday.

“Jessica. It’s good to see you.”

She hugs him, and he’s almost afraid to return the gesture– she’s dressed in exquisite couture, boldly wearing an all-white dress into prison, and he worries that he and his khaki might contaminate her, somehow. But he embraces her regardless, because he’s missed her, and because he suspects it’s the last time he’ll see her in a long while.

“You’re taking the Kirkland job, I assume.”

“I am. The firm’s done. Rachel’s taking her clients and Mike to her father’s firm. No word yet on Louis, but I’ll be bringing all my clients to Chicago.”

“Are you aiming to make name partner again?” he jokes.

“The fact that both Kirkland and Ellis were born in the 1800’s makes that slightly unlikely,” she remarks, “but I wouldn’t count it out entirely.”

“Kirkland, Ellis & Pearson. Sounds good to me,” he says, and she laughs graciously. They proceed to have a perfectly cordial discussion about how the firm– their firm, _her_ firm– has officially crumbled to ashes, and he wonders how much fury she’s concealing right now, and if she’s holding back her rage because she knows he’s already about to disintegrate under the force of his own guilt.

Soon, visiting hours come to an end, and she rises to walk out of his life. Before she leaves, she looks back down at him and says, “Stay out of trouble, would you?”

* * *

There’s a sleepy-eyed, sandy-haired guard on duty. Harvey’s never interacted with him, but he’s seen him ignoring infractions left and right.

Harvey keeps his head down and deals new hands to his circle of white-collar screwups. They’ve just added a member– a Wall Street hotshot who pled guilty to an insider trading charge.

After losing almost all his pretend money in one round of poker, the insider trader protests, “You’re obviously stacking the deck.”

Harvey glares at him. “I don’t cheat.”

“Yeah? Then how come you win every time you deal?”

“First of all, I’ve been winning even when I don’t deal. Second of all, we’re playing for paper tokens, why the hell would I bother cheating?”

“Because you want to win, we all do.”

“I don’t need to cheat to beat you, not when I could read your tells from a mile away.”

“Liar.”

“I’m telling you, I’m not cheating. You doubting my word?”

“You’re the one in here for fraud. You tell me.”

Nostrils flaring, Harvey leans in. “All right, here’s what’s going to happen. Either you’re going to shut your mouth and play the damn game, or you’re going to get up and walk away.”

“Or?”

Idiot. “Or I’ll have to teach you a lesson–”

But the insider trader lunges, and Harvey gets his hands up just in time to block a hit to his face. He lands a solid counterpunch, but suddenly two other guys are jumping in from another table, attempting to dogpile him, one wielding a spoon now sharpened into a shiv. Without thinking, Harvey grabs it right out of his hand, wincing as the blade bites into his palm, and he turns it outwards at the crowd coming at him, and how is this all happening so fast–

“Put it down!” comes the guard’s voice, and Harvey throws the weapon on the floor and plants his foot on it.

“That yours?”

Harvey shakes his head.

“Whose is it?”

Nobody talks. First rule of prison and all that.

The guard surveys the crowd before saying, “You’re coming with me, Specter.”

“Jesus Christ, it’s not mine–”

The words are stolen from his mouth as the guard grabs his hands, pinning them behind him. There’s the clink of cuffs fastening around his wrists, and then he’s being hauled out of the room.

* * *

Harvey’s briefly taken to the infirmary to have his hand bandaged. Then he’s brought back to his cell, and like a trained dog he’s ordered to “stay.”

In hours, he’s given formal notice of two charges against him– “fighting with another person,” and “threatening another with bodily harm or any other offense.” His hearing is scheduled for the next afternoon– Tuesday– four days earlier than mandated, before he’ll get any chance to consult with Mike.

He writes to him regardless, choosing his words carefully, disclosing the allegations without making any comment on their veracity. He knows full well his letter will be read before it’s sent anywhere, and he has no intention of giving the officers any extra ammunition.

Not that it ends up making a difference.

* * *

The “hearing” is a pale shadow of real court proceedings.

Harvey asks for four witnesses, guys from his white-collar group, to state that he didn’t issue any serious threats and that he only fought in self-defence. The Disciplinary Hearing Officer tells him four witnesses would be redundant, so he only lets in one.

Harvey asks the DHO to bring in several other officers who can testify that yesterday’s guard has a history of “not noticing” infractions, thus casting doubt on his reliability. The DHO claims Danbury is too low on staff for him to call extra officers from their duties, so he refuses.

The one witness on Harvey’s side– the water hyacinth trafficker– develops memory issues, insisting that he’s not sure who started the fight. The sandy-haired guard develops a perfect memory, recalling in exquisite detail how Harvey drove the entire conflict and came close to causing a riot. Then the insider trader comes in, looking pitiful with his black eye, shrinking into his chair and quivering as soon as he catches sight of Harvey, and describes how he genuinely feared for his life when Harvey threatened to “teach him a lesson.” His speech is so heart-wrenching and eloquent he couldn’t have done better if Harvey had personally coached him.

Harvey hates it all, hates the stench of foul play, but he can’t do a damn thing about it– he submitted questions ahead of time, sure, but inmates aren’t allowed to personally examine witnesses. And so he hears the DHO read off his questions in a bored monotone, and he watches every witness weasel his way out of an honest answer, and he curses the fact that he can’t jump in and speak and press where it hurts.

Thus he is found guilty of fighting and threatening harm.

“These are serious charges,” the DHO monologues. “And they require serious disciplinary measures.”

Harvey bites his tongue as he hears the list of punishments– a recommendation that his parole date be delayed, losing good time, losing phone privileges, losing his job, etc. etc.– and he thinks he might just make it out of this mess intact–

“Along with 18 months in disciplinary segregation.”

* * *

He’s led back to Special Housing Unit 5. The damn light’s still flickering.

* * *

The “Seven Day Review” of his placement in segregation happens within one day. Harvey knows he should be worried that bureaucracy, usually reliable in its sluggishness, has turned mysteriously efficient where he’s concerned.

Yet he’s thankful for the review hearing, thankful for the chance to escape his tiny cell. He’s spent less than 24 hours in the hole, sleeping in spite of the indecisive light, yet he’s both exhausted and restless by the time morning comes.

He attends the hearing– which turns out just to be a conversation with the Segregation Review Official– and makes a perfectly reasoned, perfectly reasonable argument for why he should be removed from segregation. Segregation’s expensive. It’s overkill. He’ll learn his lessons from the other measures the disciplinary hearing put in place. The SRO listens to him with a thoughtful expression, hears out his entire statement, and then promptly denies his request.

Perhaps it’s the exhaustion, but it takes Harvey a moment to collect himself and stutter out a second question about when he can recover his property from his old cell, the things he had bought from the commissary and his legal materials. The SRO gives him a dirty look before telling him he’ll receive his items later in the day and reminding him that there are far stricter property limits in the SHU. Harvey decides to press his luck and ask for an exception so he can keep his playing cards and an extra battery for his radio, and it’s allowed.

It feels like a major victory.

Harvey returns to his cell and waits for hours until an officer dumps several boxes of his things on the floor. He immediately extracts the radio and headphones. After further rummaging, he picks out a variety of other objects– stamps, pens, soap. He looks for his alarm clock, but it’s been removed, along with his razors.

Then he turns to the final boxes– three cubic feet of legal materials that he has to whittle down to one in order to comply with SHU regulations, in some twisted echo of discovery.

The first thing he salvages is an out-of-date Barbri handbook.

* * *

“18 months?” Mike’s eyes pop out. “Why?”

“I told you, for fighting and threatening physical harm.”

“Harvey–”

“And I am guilty of both those things, which surprises neither of us. That said, I issued the least threatening threat that I’ve heard in here, and I wasn’t the only one fighting, and yet I’m the only one in the SHU. They’re harder on me than anyone else, and I still haven’t figured out why.” He snorts. “Don’t want to ask and get 3 months for insolence.”

“Harvey,” Mike says, voice dead serious, “we have to get you out.”

“And how are you planning to do that, Mike?”

“There’s rules. Nobody’s better than us at exploiting them.”

“The rules say they can put me in the hole for 18 months. They also say I could have gotten away just with losing my movie privileges for a week. The rules don’t matter, Mike–”

“They can’t lock you in solitary for a year and a half!”

Harvey flinches as Mike slams his hand against the table. The guard looks at them through the window.

“I hate to break it to you, but they can, and they did. And yes, there’s hearings and rules and paperwork, but if you think this is anything like corporate law you’re dead wrong.”

“But,” Mike stutters, “but we can appeal this. Get you out on psychiatric grounds.”

“Excuse me?”

“You have a history of panic attacks–”

“That’s relevant how? Or, more importantly,” Harvey snaps, “how do you think that disclosure would go? Best case scenario, I say that I have panic attacks, and they accuse me of making them up to get out of solitary, and I stay in solitary with guards who like me even less than they currently do.”

“Harvey–” Mike’s eyes flutter closed– “how much trouble do you think you’re in?”

“With the guards? I can’t tell yet–”

“No, I meant with the Special Housing Unit. How bad do you think 18 months in solitary will be?”

Harvey frowns at him. “It’s going to be boring as hell. The room throws me sometimes, just the–” he clenches his hands.

“The smallness,” Mike supplies.

“If we want to sound like kindergarteners, yes, the ‘smallness.’ It puts me on edge.”

“Anything else?”

“Not that I can think of. Oh, the light in there keeps flickering, but that’s not the end of the world.”

“Okay,” Mike says, swallowing hard. “Before I say anything else, I want you to make me a promise.”

“What promise?”

“Promise me you’ll never physically hurt yourself.”

“Where is this coming from? I’ve got no history–”

“So will you make the promise?”

“Yes? Yeah, of course.”

Mike sags back in his chair, breathing, “Thank god.”

After a moment, he straightens back up and says, “Alright, here’s my initial research on solitary confinement. I looked this all up back when you got put in ad seg earlier, but I was hoping not to need it.”

Harvey just raises his chin. “Tell me.”

“Solitary confinement results in a rather unique constellation of mental problems. There’s a stupor, a mental haze if you will, that makes it hard to think or recall things properly. Then there’s hypersensitivity to stimuli and errors in perception. People report sudden obsessions,” Mike says, “as well as severe panic attacks.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Harvey deadpans.

“Should I stop?”

“What?”

“Should I stop sugarcoating it? Because I was.” Mike leans forward, putting his forearms on the table. “You might escape the worst, intelligence can protect you, but your past history of mental illness puts you at increased risk.”

“What does the ‘worst’ look like?”

“Complete detachment from reality. And humanity.”

* * *

They make a plan.

Mike promises to visit at least once every week– sometimes in a professional capacity, and sometimes as a friend, to avoid suspicion that they’re circumventing the usual visiting points system. They decide to pick areas of law for Harvey to review each week– “and then I’ll get to interview you, for a change.”

Harvey would protest this pointless exercise, but the fact that he might get disbarred, that his only good shot at practicing law again might be passing another state’s bar exam, means it’s not necessarily pointless. Mike promises to mail books, too, since Harvey can keep up to five paperbacks in his room, and Harvey’ll keep up with the news anyway through his _NYT_ subscription.

Then there’s music. Harvey can buy two batteries a week, and those should power his little radio for 80 hours. The situation’s far from ideal, given that the radio is his only source of sound besides his own voice and his neighbors’ bellowing, but he’ll make sure to conserve the power carefully. Mike informs Harvey that WPUT regularly plays jazz. He’s not surprised to hear that Harvey is already one of their most loyal listeners.

They brainstorm ideas for downtime, too. Harvey can play solitaire or blackjack and teach himself to count cards, and Mike immediately jokes that they should go get thrown out of casinos together as soon as he gets out. He’s also got pen and paper to write letters, though he’ll have to scrub them clean of all possibly compromising or objectionable material, if he’s to avoid raising officers’ eyebrows. “And you can write study notes, or stories, or diary entries. Do you write poetry, Harvey? Will you take this chance to perfect your sonnets?”

They decide exercise is a _sine qua non._ Harvey comes up with a benefit to having the least supportive mattress of all time– he can roll it into a mediocre punching bag– and he’s got plenty of other workouts stored in his head, everything from push-ups to “sun salutations,” thanks to that one awful yoga class Donna sent him to. He also promises that every week he’ll take his allotted five hours of recreation time in a chainlink cage outside, already suspecting he’ll spend them doing sit-ups at the very edge, staring up through the fence at that unreachable blue sky.

“I can’t believe they’re trying to lock you in a box and forget about you,” Mike sighs as he leaves.

“Well, as long as you don’t forget me, I figure I’ll survive.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but forgetting’s never been my strong suit.”

* * *

Harvey awakes to the rattling of wheels. He looks out the tiny window in his door and sees a cleaning cart. He cranes his neck and spots a pool of blood spilling out Unit 4’s door.

He collapses back on his bed and resumes sleeping.

All too soon, he realizes what Mike meant by a “mental haze.” He had felt it last time around and chalked it up to sleep deprivation and nerves, but he doesn’t ignore it now, this stuffiness settling around his mind. And so, he pretends he’s a brand-new law student again and takes diligent notes when he reads his law books. He works frequent breaks into his study time, stopping for music or food– if the colorless mishmash on his tray deserves the name. Still, it’s a struggle to keep even simple fundamentals straight in his head when he’s stuck in his cell.

Yet when he escapes for his visiting time and slips into the chair opposite Mike, the material falls obediently into place, and he smoothly answers every question Mike throws at him, threading quips and jabs and movie quotes into every speech. Mike can’t hide his relief every time Harvey shows up, alive and functioning and still perfectly capable of matching him blow for blow. It’s reassuring to Harvey, this proof that he hasn’t lost it.

* * *

Harvey is losing it.

He had planned to keep taking notes on patent litigation from four o’clock until dinner, but the hours are stretching longer than they reasonably should, and he has to actively work to string phrases together. Words come to him in short bursts, otherwise fading into static. Halfway through each sentence, he forgets what it says and has to re-read it aloud in order to complete it.

With a huff, he crumples his paper and blinks his burning eyes, glancing down at the scar on his palm. It’s nearly healed, just the faintest line of red against creamy skin that blends into the khaki cloth of his pants, which in turn merges with the gray of his bed and the off-white of the walls, and suddenly everything is the same color in his mind, and he can’t see the edges between them. He steals a look at the door and finds that it’s wavering, and the lines of the metal grid over the window are blurring together, and he’s not sure there’s really any space between them for him to look through.

“Errors in perception,” Mike had said.

Harvey twists and looks above him, where there should be a camera, recording his every move for officers to scrutinize. Yeah, that’s still there, beady and black and vigilant in the corner of the room.

He reaches for his radio, lying at the edge of the mattress. The first place he just grabs at turns out to just be an empty spot, but he succeeds the second time around, and he pulls it close and squints at it for a moment, its multicolored innards exposed to scrutiny by the clear cover. The brightest parts, he realizes, are circles of sky blue fixed among the brown and black and gray.

He switches it on. It’s set to WPUT, which is playing “L-O-V-E,” the iconic Nat King Cole version.

 _L is for the way you look at me,_  
_O is for the only one I see,_  
_V is very, very extraordinary,_  
_E is even more than anyone that you adore_

He closes his eyes.

 _Love is more than just a game for two_  
_Two in love can make it_  
_Take my heart and please don’t break it_

He opens his eyes and finds he can’t see the malfunctioning light anymore. Instead, the whole room is bathed in a soft, stable sky blue.

* * *

A couple months in, he receives two visitors instead of one– Donna and Louis. They tell him Mike won’t make it this weekend because Zane’s gotten slammed with multiple huge class-actions, and also that they’re now moving out to Silicon Valley with Benjamin in order to pursue “The Donna” in the world’s technology hub. Harvey can’t tell which part throws him more.

He struggles to keep up as they relate their journey into the world of start-ups, how Benjamin capitalized on Donna’s semi-divinity and translated it into code, how Louis has defended his software from patent infringement claims, how they’ve all banded together to win good press and VC funding and interest from potential acquirers. Perhaps he’s gotten slower at comprehension, but he wouldn’t be surprised if their story confuses him simply because it makes little sense.

He does understand, however, the way that Donna and Louis laugh and tease one another, how they start speaking at the same time and then break off in chuckles, how they each steal what they apparently think are secret glances at the other.

Just before their time is up, he says, “Am I imagining it, or are you two dating now?”

They glance at each other. Then Donna slides one hand into Louis’ and curls her fingers around his and answers, “Yeah, we are.”

Harvey stays silent, eyes fixed on their hands.

“Are you . . . okay with this?” Louis asks.

“Yeah,” Harvey says. “Yeah, I am. She could do much worse than you, and _you_ couldn’t possibly do any better than her.”

* * *

He meant it. He means it. Despite everyone’s constant insinuations, he hasn’t wanted Donna that way in years, and he’s glad she and Louis are seizing their chance at happiness. He’s glad they came to see him today.

But now they’re gone, just like Jessica, and Mike’s not here either, and a sudden loneliness comes clawing its way out of him.

Now back in his cell, he looks down at his palms and slides them towards each other and curls his fingers together, and he looks back up at the walls and finds them closing in on him, and he’s not sure whether it’s the pipes or the clanging doors outside or whether he’s just imagining the sound of the garbage compactor from Star Wars. The air is suddenly solid, pressing in on him, and he tries unsuccessfully to suck in a breath before succumbing to the inevitable panic attack.

* * *

A dam has broken, but Harvey fights to stay afloat.

He fights to read and write, a half hour at a time, and he fights to ignore the clanging and shouting in the other cells instead of joining in, and he fights the impulse to just lie down and give up when his mind plays tricks on him, when the room spins or the floor quakes or the light’s flickering speeds up until it’s like he’s living with a goddamn strobe light.

And after every panic attack, he fights off the longing to curl up into a ball and rock himself to sleep, nestling into the corner of the room, pressing his body against two walls and pretending it’s human contact.

* * *

“I need you to hug me.”

Harvey tries to make the statement sound as authoritative as possible, and he predicts Mike will make a joke and dub this proof of caring. Mike simply replies, “Okay.”

Per the Danbury visitation rules they’re allowed two hugs or kisses or handshakes, two moments of contact, one at the start and one at the end of their visit– Donna had given him two quick squeezes and a peck on the cheek when she visited, while Louis stuck to a tried-and-true handshake. Harvey expects awkwardness now, but Mike surprises him once again, opening his arms wide. Harvey embraces him– sinks into him, dissolving into his touch.

“The guard’s looking,” Mike eventually whispers, and Harvey has to suppress something suspiciously like a whimper as he pulls away and takes a seat.

“Sorry about that,” he says.

“Don’t be,” Mike tells him. “Humans don’t do well without physical contact of some kind.”

They turn to their review session, and Mike trips Harvey up on multiple questions and repeatedly out-thinks him. Some cases are just proof of Mike’s incredible brain, but with others Harvey’s making obvious mistakes. He tries to mask his frustration, but Mike finally pauses and tells him it’s okay that he’s missing some answers.

“You’re actually doing really well,” he says in an encouraging tone.

“If I were a potential employee,” Harvey replies, “I wouldn’t hire me.”

“Well, I’d hire you,” Mike says, grinning. “We could be Rand, Kaldor & Zane paralegals together.”

Harvey leans back. “Do you like it there?”

“It’s a decent enough job, and since you’re officially Rachel’s client I get to see you. Pro bono opportunities are a bit lacking though.”

“How’s the work-life balance?”

Mike’s smile falters, and he shrugs. “I have work, and I have you.”

The statement hangs in the air until Harvey says, “I’m sorry about that.”

“Sorry.” The word sounds small and foreign in Harvey’s voice.

“Oh, God, Harvey–” Mike’s own voice cracks oddly– “don’t be sorry.”

* * *

The guy in Unit 4 gets wheeled out on a stretcher at three in the morning. Since he’s awake, Harvey peeks outside and sees him gesticulating wildly, his uniform drenched in blood.

Harvey’s been awake for two days straight.

He retreats from the door, sits back on his bed, and goes back to planning out his commissary purchases for the month. He wrecked his previous plan last week when he bought a pair of extraneous strawberry pop tarts, but he doesn’t regret it, not today.

“The thought of eating two pop tarts shouldn’t excite me this much,” he remarks to the wall. The wall says nothing back, which he counts as a plus.

He’s still awake at sunrise, when breakfast gets dropped off. It’s the usual colorless gook, and he skips it entirely in favor of the first pop tart.

He turns on the radio when his watch tells him it’s 8 and tunes in to WPUT. It plays in the background as he unfolds yesterday’s _Times_ – he wants to reread the political columns, if only because this election makes him feel less lonely, like the entire world is joining his descent into madness. He’s halfway through a belligerent op-ed–

“We have some special programming planned for today, focusing on a name familiar to our most intense jazz enthusiasts– Gordon Specter. We’ll be trawling all day through this saxophonist’s large and varied repertoire, and we’ve got our hands on some rare master tapes of his performances, thanks to an anonymous source, who just wants to say it’s a birthday gift for a very special friend . . .”

Harvey drops the newspaper and takes up the radio, clutching the little box and smiling so wide it hurts.

* * *

The next time Mike visits they’re in the Attorney/Client Room, shielded somewhat from the regular visitors, and they linger in their embrace. Harvey feels like he can breathe for the first time in months as he inhales Mike’s smell– clean and flowery, some sort of fragrance Rachel probably purchased.

“Did you get my present?” Mike asks as they pull apart.

“I did.”

“Good,” he says. “I didn’t tell you because I was so caught up with a case I thought I wouldn’t pull it together in time–”

“Mike,” he breaks in firmly, “playing those songs was the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

Mike raises an eyebrow. “You remember Jessica once pulled you out of the mail room and offered to pay your way through law school?”

“I do. And I still rank this above that.”

“It’s the least I could do.” Mike chuckles. “I mean, Harvey– you went to prison for me.”

“The least I could do. Don’t forget, you’ve pulled me out of plenty of tight spots through the years.”

“Not the same,” Mike says, smile falling away, and something twists in Harvey’s heart. “Anyway, I did even more reading on the effects of solitary–”

“You need to stop doing that, kid, you’re going to give yourself nightmares.”

There’s a shift in Mike’s expression, and Harvey catches it.

Goddammit.

“You might want to see someone if it’s too much stress,” Harvey says, looking away. “Paula Agard, my old therapist, she can help. Or talking to Rachel–”

“I haven’t told Rachel,” Mike frowns, giving a little shake of his head. “Things are . . . complicated with us right now.”

“Well, engagements are tough. Spending every weekend in another state with your ex-boss can’t help.”

Another shot that hits closer to home than intended.

“Never mind that,” Mike says after a moment, “we’ve got more tort law to review. Just to warm up, name five types of torts, like ‘defamation’ or ‘trover.’”

“Fraud, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, abuse of process.” They roll off his tongue.

“And name a possible defense against a tort claim?”

“ _Ex turpi causa_. A criminal doesn’t get to complain when something criminal happens to him.”

“That’s not . . . exactly what that means.”

“You got the gist.”

“Harvey.”

“What?”

He inhales deeply before saying, “I was saying earlier that I read about touch hunger, which is a phenomenon where people end up mentally distressed because they don’t get enough physical contact. It can show up anywhere, but it’s particularly common in solitary.”

“And?”

Mike reaches out a hand.

Harvey gapes for a moment. “You asking me to hold hands with you?”

“If you want.”

“What are you, five? Also–”

“Also per section 17d of the Danbury Visiting Regulations hand-holding is explicitly banned, but the officers’ view into this room is restricted, and thanks to my strategic paper placement I don’t think they’re likely to see.”

“You wanna play footsie, too?”

“Harvey.” Mike gives him a serious look. “You don’t have to take my hand, I just thought I’d offer, in case it helps. Now I’m going to ask you about successor liability–”

His hand remains on the table, palm facing up. After fighting the urge for fifteen minutes– an eternity?– Harvey takes it.

* * *

Time creeps by, long, gray stretches in solitary punctuated by short, brilliant meetings with Mike, until finally Harvey’s parole date draws near.

“Sorry we don’t have the Attorney/Client room this time around,” Mike announces, “but I left Rand, Kaldor & Zane.”

Harvey’s eyebrows jump up of their own volition. “Excuse me?”

“Rachel and I split. For good, this time, and I couldn’t stay working with her. The important part–” he pushes forward a folder– “is that I got Elise Lee, one of their new senior partners, to represent you. She’s handled more Danbury parole hearings than just about anyone, and I highly recommend you go with her.”

Harvey takes a look at her resume, and at the separate write-up Mike’s prepared. “You afraid I’m going to represent myself?”

“The thought’s crossed your mind, hasn’t it?”

“I could do it.”

“I think you can too, most likely. But that likelihood’s not 100%, and it’s foolish to gamble with your life.”

“Okay–” he closes the folder– “Elise Lee it is. Now, have you considered what you’re going to do after this?”

“I feel like I should be asking you that at this point,” Mike says with a short laugh. “I’m fairly certain I can’t get another job in law– Robert Zane said he’d blackball me from the industry, and I think he meant it.”

“Quite the blow-up, huh?”

“Legendary. Fortunately, I have a standing offer from Benjamin to come help program for The Donna. And no, I can’t code yet, but I think I can pick it up.”

“I know you can.  Would that involve you moving to the west coast?”

“No. It’s remote work, I’m going to stay right here.”

Harvey releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, and then they genuinely try to focus on their legal review before once again wandering off-topic.

“So what do you want to do when you get out?” Mike asks.

“I want to keep my license, maybe go back to corporate law.”

“Maybe?”

“I know I’ve had a lot of time to think, but I haven’t figured it all out just yet,” Harvey says, a note of irritation creeping in.

“That’s okay, one step at a time. What do you want to do right after you get out?”

“Sleep.”

“Fair answer, I can’t imagine you get a lot of sound sleep in here,” Mike says. “Anything else you’ve missed?”

Harvey’s voice catches as one thousand answers rise at once– _I miss color, I miss being able to read a whole page at a time, I miss standing on the roof of the firm building and gazing at the Manhattan skyline, I miss being held, I miss working with you, I miss joking with you, I miss insulting you and waiting ten seconds for you to notice, I miss you_ – but the first thing he says is, “I miss sauerkraut.”

Mike laughs. “All right, what else?”

“I’d say pickles, but I actually managed to snag one from the commissary this week, so I’m fine. I miss the smoke from the hot dog-kebab carts, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I don’t know, I . . . I miss the bean sprouts and cilantro from that Korean-Uzbek restaurant we found. I miss having a choice in clothes. I miss the Bergdorf window displays, and if you ever dare repeat that . . .” he trails off, chuckling. “I miss the snow before the traffic turns it gray. I miss movies, and buttered popcorn, and those wasabi truffles from SoHo, and the espresso gelato at Eataly–”

Except for a few encouraging comments, Mike lets him ramble on until visiting hours are over, never judging, just smiling that incandescent smile. When Harvey melts into his arms at the end he whispers, “Hang in there, okay? Just ten more days.”

Harvey thinks he wants to say something more.

* * *

The day before his hearing, Harvey returns from his outdoor exercise to find two officers searching his room, rifling through his papers, throwing the Barbri handbook and the radio on the floor, and Harvey has to remind himself that insolence is a Moderate severity prohibited act in order to keep from shouting. Then an officer– the same sandy-haired one who got him thrown in solitary in the first place– spins around with a grin on his face. “Wanna explain this?”

Harvey can do nothing but stare down at the little spool of thread in the guard’s hand– the same thread he used in his UNICOR job. “That’s not mine.”

“I know. And yet it’s in your room. You know what that means?”

Possession of non-hazardous contraband is a Moderate severity prohibited act, punishable by delays in or loss of parole and up to three months in disciplinary segregation. Theft is a High severity prohibited act, with even stronger penalties. The situation worsens if they somehow argue it’s hazardous contraband, that he’s going to weave a rope to strangle someone else with, though no one would care if he just strangled himself.

“It means somebody planted thread in my cell.”

“You trying to get written up for insolence, Specter?”

He looks down, trying to ignore the damn light pulsing furiously in the periphery, blinding even when he closes his eyes. “No, just stating facts. I have no use for that thread, and I had no way to get it in here past all the searches.”

“And yet it’s here.”

“Which means someone planted it. Once you drop all the impossible stuff, whatever’s left has to be true.” It’s a bastardization of the quote, but he can’t quite collect himself enough to remember the original, or who said it, not when he can’t finish a thought or fill his lungs. They can throw him back in solitary, they can lock him up and never let him out again, and all because of a spool of thread that cost at most a quarter. “Listen, if I pay back the cost of the thread, can we forget this?”

“This is a serious infraction,” Sandy says. “You stole from the factory.”

Serious. Severity. Disciplinary consequences.

“Fine,” Harvey says, his voice skirting the edge of begging, “how much do I need to pay you to forget about this?”

There’s a flash of interest in the guard’s eyes.

“I’ll double whatever he pays you.”

It’s a shot in the dark, he’s never gotten certain proof that there’s a conspiracy against him, but the man’s face changes as he says the words, a cartoon grin spreading across his face. Harvey’s heart leaps–

“You hear that? He just offered me a bribe. That’s his third High severity prohibited act.”

* * *

A new disciplinary hearing takes the place of his parole hearing, and he knows he deserves it. It’s a kneejerk reaction, to blackmail or bribe whenever he’s backed into a corner, it was even when he was a so-called upstanding lawyer, and though he tries to defend himself at the hearing the words ring hollow even to him. The DHO recommends the rescission of his parole date, throws him in solitary for his remaining sentence, suspends his commissary privileges–

“And your visitation privileges.”

* * *

Harvey knows the DHO stayed within the parameters of acceptable sentencing. He dropped the thread charges– an “informal resolution,” he called it– and focused on the bribery, which Harvey is unambiguously guilty of.

He unambiguously deserves this.

So he rots in his cell through the weeks and the weekends, unable to receive visits from anyone not currently employed by his official legal representation, Rand, Kaldor & Zane. Funnily enough, nobody from there ever comes by.

He spends hours staring at his radio. It’s sad and small and largely silent, now that he can’t buy new batteries for it from the commissary– he predicts it’s got only a little life left in it, around 10 hours. He’s tempted to turn it on, but he won’t take the risk, not now that he’s got to make it last for the rest of his time.

* * *

The radio has less life than he thought– or perhaps he just demanded too much of it– and it stutters and goes silent in less than three weeks.

Every day, Harvey’s mind threatens to do the same. Soon after he wakes, he can make it through the front page and the op-eds of the _Times_ , whenever the words deign to stay in their lines, and then his mind shorts out. He’s got nothing but racing fears– _the walls aren’t really moving, you’re not actually choking, that’s paranoid thinking, don’t be paranoid_ – that show up in waves and then recede and leave white noise.

After so many years of trying to turn off his emotions, he wakes up one time and finds he really doesn’t care anymore.

* * *

He figures they can’t possibly make his life worse at this point, so he asks to submit a formal grievance challenging his placement in seg. The officers tell him they’ll get around to initiating the process, but he doesn’t buy it. The next day, the headphones for his radio, which he also uses as earplugs to help him sleep, go missing during his outdoor exercise break. His newspaper never comes.

As always, his neighbors are kicking at the doors and screaming obscenities, as Harvey sits down to re-read yesterday’s paper with his last box of Animal Crackers, humming Charles Bradley’s “The World.”

There’s the rattling of wheels, and Harvey gets up to glance out the window. Previously, the men whom he’s seen get extracted on stretchers have still been alive– he’s seen them stumble out the doors on their own two feet, or be pulled out, flailing and thrashing. Turns out the human body can withstand a shocking amount of blood loss.

Today, the body dragged out of SHU 4 is limp, already lifeless. As the screaming intensifies into deafening ululation, Harvey blinks– for a moment, he saw himself on the stretcher.

He closes his eyes, and for a moment he lets himself imagine.

Then icy guilt comes to stab at him, because he made a deal. He made Mike a deal, and what is he doing, thinking of breaking it? What the hell good is he if he can’t even keep the simplest promise? This whole sentence has proved he’s a godawful lawyer, more likely to bribe or blackmail or punch a problem into submission than legally solve it, but he was sure keeping promises was the one thing he did reliably.

So much for that.

He needs to break something, and he’s tempted to do in that damn light finally, but he doesn’t care about it nearly enough, not now. He wants a loophole in his deal. He wants punishment, real punishment, he wants correction, he wants to be made better, he wants to shatter himself and his good-for-nothing brain and his foolish, foolish heart–

He’s not even thinking as he closes his fingers around his radio, backs up to the wall, and pitches it like a fastball against the steel door, squarely hitting the window. The radio shatters, spilling gears and plastic all over the floor, and blue rings fall apart and skitter under his bed.

He is stunned to silence, and then the guilt really crashes down.

* * *

There is something broken in him.

He starts skipping his exercise hours. He forces himself to eat something at every meal, though he can’t remember why. He remembers before, when he used to leap out of bed and plunge into firm intrigue and flit from one matter to another– and from one lover to another– but he can’t remember why he tried so hard.

Why is he still trying?

In the final week of the sentence, the sleep-deprivation fog morphs into something stranger, something alien.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury–” he breaks off coughing, voice creaky from disuse, and he takes a quick swig of the metallic water from the sink.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my respected colleague Ms. Scott has utterly failed to meet the burden of proof in this case. She claimed in her opening statement that she would place the defendant at the scene of the crime through forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony–”

He breaks off, eyes wide, because while this speech that he memorized back during his Harvard days rolled easily enough off the tongue, he’s not the one saying it. He hears the words as if he’s listening to a radio. He is not speaking, and so he has no idea what Harvey Specter will do or say next, if anything.

He’s not Harvey Specter.

Did Harvey Specter, this confident lawyer charging through a closing statement, ever really exist?

Maybe this is another “error in perception,” this feeling of untethered non-existence. Maybe it’s just another symptom of solitary confinement, but he’s felt this even before prison, creeping up with the worst of his panic attacks, and here comes the telltale tightness in his lungs, as he admits he’s finally lost his grip on reality.

There’s a banging on the door, and a guard shouts, “Your lawyer’s here.”

A lawyer? What lawyer? He tries to think of his visitors’ list. Louis? Elise Lee? God forbid, Rachel or Robert Zane?

“Do you mean a paralegal or legal consultant?” he hears himself say.

“Lawyer, they made me run the check with the bar myself.”

Not Mike, then– there’s no chance the New York Bar will ever let him slip through ever again.

“Not interested!”

He can’t see anyone but Mike, not when he’s like this, when he’s got no control over his voice or his body or his mind. He can’t go out like this. He has to grab onto something real and weather this, not that he can think of anything that’s real anymore–

_Mike._

He grabs a blue pen and faces the wall.

* * *

There’s graffiti on the walls of his cell already, though nothing extensive. The main feature is a cross someone drew above the bed. Harvey uses that as centerpiece of sorts, and he begins scribbling around it.

 _“Cheap suit”_  
_“Cheaper briefcase”_  
_“Barbri handbook+Sarbox”_  
_“What if it was her daughter=little gem”_  
_“Writing for Hallmark”_

He stubbornly keeps his breathing in time and grasps his pen harder, plucking out everything he can remember, in some vague approximation of chronological order, about the one constant in his life.

 _“Soft features”_  
_“Uhura”_  
_“Pineapple”_

Slowly, he can feel himself returning, even as he pours more of himself out.

 _“Love at first sight”_  
_“OshKosh B'Gosh”_  
_“Can opener”_

His scrawls spiral out across the blank wall, snatches of conversations and quotes and banter, and his hand speeds up as his memory kicks into full gear, for the first time in a year. He redacts the privileged bits but leaves the rest, knowing full well that only two people on Earth could ever decode this.

 _“Aquaman”_  
_“Orchids?”_  
_“Vests??”_  
_“Master tapes”_  
_“Top left drawer”_  
_“Vests!”_

Each memory floods his mind in full color, and he can inhale fully for the first time since he was in Mike’s arms.

_“It’s called committing”  
“Get busy living”_

Perhaps it’s just another error of perception, but he can feel the weight of a guiding hand, gentle but steady against his neck.

* * *

He lies down in front of his monument and sleeps for a miraculous seven hours. He returns to it in the morning, filling spaces, adding tessera after tessera to his intricate blue mosaic, and the guards don’t bother him for once.

He realizes why when he goes out for exercise, on his last day, and catches sight of the guy in the next section over– Frank Gallo, pacing like a caged dog.

“Well, if it isn’t Harvey Specter,” he says.

“The hell are you doing in here, Gallo?”

“I asked for a couple days in ad seg. Heard there were some threats against me.”

“How the hell are you in Danbury? I put you away–” he cuts himself off. “Of course. You informed.”

“I’m not here to talk about me. I wanted to know how you’ve enjoyed the accommodations I set up for you.” He smiles. “Figuring it out now? It’s a little late, not that there’s anything you could have done in the first place. I’ve had this whole place answering to me for years before you showed up, guards, other prisoners, the DHO, the SRO . . . I’ve been playing you since the Reese’s Pieces, though I have to thank you for helping me out with the bribery. Always knew you were a dirty lawyer.”

He tries to cut in, but Gallo forges on: “Tell me, how did the great Harvey Specter handle solitary? Did you talk to yourself? Don’t answer, you do that anyway. Did you have panic attacks?”

Harvey keeps his face blank, but his heart is battering against his ribs.

“Did you start obsessing over everything you’ve ever done wrong? Regret being born? Personally, I was hoping you’d kill yourself– wanted to know if you’d slit your wrists like everyone else, or whether you’d come up with something original. You always did like being _special_.”

“Go to hell, Gallo.”

“What about violent fantasies, huh? You wanna break something, someone? I’ll give you a chance.” He pulls out a shiv, its blade glimmering, and offers it to Harvey through the chainlink fence. “I’ll give you ten seconds to go at me before I call for the guards. I heard you’re a good fighter– you might be able to do me in. And you’re a good enough lawyer you might get away with just a manslaughter charge.”

Harvey eyes the weapon, jaw pulsing as he considers it, considers Gallo’s rather excellent closing statement. It’s an elegant, ironic method of revenge on Gallo’s part– he might die, sure, but with his death he’d put Harvey away for murder.

“You’re tempted,” Gallo whispers.

He is, because this bastard has ruined him. Because of Frank Gallo, Harvey’s spent most of the last two years locked alive in a coffin and watching himself decay. He’s thinned and rotted and gradually lost his mind. He’s forgotten how the hell he was ever “Harvey Specter,” greatest closer in New York City. He’s forgotten how he was ever a functioning, independent person.

Harvey’s fingers twitch.

“Go ahead,” Gallo murmurs. “I’m tired. You’re tired. End it for both of us.”

Harvey glances up at the sky, filled with gray stormclouds except for a tiny strip of blue.

“No deal, Gallo,” he says eventually.

Gallo watches him for a moment, then shakes his head. “Your loss. If you think you’re going to survive on your own out there, you’re even more out of your mind than I thought.”

“I don’t think I’ll survive on my own out there,” Harvey replies evenly.

“Gonna pull a Brooks, then?”

Harvey recognizes the allusion to Shawshank, to a prisoner who got out and then immediately killed himself, and responds with silence.

“I guess my work is done,” Gallo remarks. He calls for a guard to let him out.

* * *

Harvey stays awake all night, waiting for Gallo or one of his goons to burst in and try to kill him in his cell, but no one comes. In the morning, according to schedule, he’s released from prison. He steps outside to find Mike waiting for him, just beyond the chainlink fence.

“Hey,” Mike says. “If you don’t want to see me, you can take the car, I’ll–”

“Wait–” Harvey holds up a hand– “why wouldn’t I want to see you?”

“You didn’t come last week.”

“What?” Harvey frowns, trying to remember. “They said it was an attorney, not a consultant–”

“Did you not get my letters?” He sighs when Harvey shakes his head. “I got into the New York Bar.”

“What?”

“It’s a long story,” Mike says, smile soft but proud. “The short version is that the bar rules changed to accept reading the law as a substitute for law school, and also the bar’s assorted committees are much more forgiving than I was expecting. That’s good news for your hearing, by the way. I’m almost positive I can get you off with just one more year’s suspension.”

“So you’re a real lawyer, after all that?” Harvey feels something foreign sneaking up– the start of a grin. “That’s amazing, Mike.”

Mike reaches out his arms, then, and Harvey lets himself melt.

“For the record, I always want to see you.”

They break apart after what feels like a full minute, and Mike points Harvey towards the car.

“Ray?” Harvey raises an eyebrow.

“Good to see you,” Ray says, beaming at him as he slides in. “I’m afraid I have no idea what’s in the CD player today– it was Mike’s choice.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Hey!” Mike mock-exclaims. “But seriously, Harvey, if you’d rather sleep or talk or just not have any sound, that’s fine.”

“If it’s Selena Gomez or Justin Bieber, I will have Ray drive us to California so I can personally drop you off on Louis’ doorstep,” Harvey says.

“Don’t diss modern music until you’ve heard Postmodern Jukebox,” Mike retorts.

“Do I even want to know what that is?”

“Trust me, you do.” Mike settles into the car, frowning as Harvey groans and rubs his temples. “Hey, does your head hurt?”

Harvey nods.

“Try closing your eyes for now. Confinement tends to screw up depth perception– but don’t worry, we can work on that and get you back to hitting home runs.”

“Just one thing first,” Harvey says, and he flips down the vanity mirror on the visor.

A stranger’s face looks back at him. He’s aged a decade in the past two years– there are haggard circles under his eyes, and deep wrinkles everywhere, and his hair is short and fuzzy and more gray than not.

“Silver fox is going to be a good look on you,” Mike says from the backseat, “once your hair grows back in.”

And just like that, Harvey laughs, and he recognizes himself again.

“Of course it’ll be a good look,” he says, closing the mirror. “All right, Ray, let’s have it. What horror will he impose on my eardrums?”

Ray presses the dial, and Harvey immediately snorts. It’s the Spinners.

“Whaddya know,” he says, “I did actually manage to teach you something.”

 _And honey you’ll always be the only one for me_  
_Meeting you was my destiny_  
_You can be sure I will never let you down_  
_When you need me I will be around_  
_And darling you’ll always be the only one for me_  
_Heaven made you specially_  
_Could it be I’m falling in love_

* * *

A storm sets in by the time they make it back to Manhattan, all snow and blustering gales. Harvey’s about to scowl when Mike nudges him and says, “You wanted to see snow before the traffic turned it gray. Here’s a good chance.”

And suddenly even the ice is beautiful to him.

When Harvey arrives at his apartment, he heads to the shower immediately, reveling in the clean water and excellent water pressure as he scrubs off two years of grit, and then brushes his teeth, entirely too pleased to taste his own toothpaste again. Mike says he’ll get dinner ready in the meantime.

After Harvey emerges into his bedroom, he puts on an undershirt and pants and is shrugging on a henley when the storm knocks the power out. The lights shut off, only to flicker back to life as the building generator kicks in.

Harvey looks out his window at the sweeping cityscape, but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s still confined, still trapped and choked and alone.

“Mike–” the word is a croak, but he tries again– “Mike!”

As he gives up on the henley, casting it on the floor, and collapses on his bed with his eyes clenched shut, he hears the footsteps, quick but steady, and then the creak of the door.

“Oh, Harvey,” Mike breathes.

“It’s the lights.” He gestures vaguely upwards. “I think the flashing’s a trigger.”

“How can I help?”

“Don’t know.”

“Can I hold your hand?”

Harvey nods, and he feels the mattress dip as Mike sits down next to him, takes one of his hands and interweaves their fingers.

“You’re safe now,” Mike whispers. “If you want, you never have to be on your own again.”

Mike keeps murmuring to him, how he’s safe, how he’s been so strong, how they’ll get back on track, how they’ll fix it all together, and the panic subsides as Harvey almost starts to believe him.

Then Mike abruptly changes tacks.“Do you want to hear what’s for dinner?”

“What?” Harvey frowns. “Okay.”

“Kongnamul-muchim.”

“Excuse me?”

“The bean sprouts you wanted, with the cilantro? I might be mispronouncing it. And there’s caffè gelato from Eataly for dessert, along with a box of wasabi truffles. I considered bringing hot dogs to make here, but I figured you’d rather just stick to ones from a cart, so now there’s just a jar of sauerkraut and nothing to eat it with.”

Harvey snorts, even as he wipes away two tears that have squeezed out the corners of his eyes. “Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“You know how prison’s supposed to correct you? And solitary’s supposed to make you meditate on your mistakes and repent?”

“That was the initial goal, yes,” Mike says, even as he moves to clasp Harvey’s hand between both of his, tracing gentle patterns on his skin.

“I never regretted you. Never regretted hiring you, never regretted keeping you around. There are two consequences of my actions, though, that I feel goddamn awful about.”

“Yeah?”

“One, I feel terrible about bringing down the firm. Two, I feel terrible about breaking the little radio I used to listen to in prison. And what does it say, that I feel equally terrible about both of those things?”

“I don’t know,” Mike says softly.

“It says that guilt and blame and responsibility don’t make any goddamn sense after a certain point. And if you’ve been coming to see me and helping me and buying me sauerkraut out of a sense of guilt or obligation, then I thank you–” he breathes deep– “but you don’t have to keep doing it. I’m out now, I’ll ask for help if I really need it, but I can figure out how to make it on my own.”

A deathly silence falls over them.

“I–” Mike closes his mouth again. “This wasn’t how I was planning to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Tell you that I’d be here even if I wasn’t indebted to you for my freedom and my entire life.” He bites his lip, considering his phrasing, and then decides on, “Harvey Specter, I’m in love with you.”

“Oh, thank god–” Harvey says with a sudden exhale– “I thought it was just me.”

“Just you who was in love with Harvey Specter?” He laughs as Harvey fixes him with a look. “No, it isn’t just you. If you want, it’s never going to be ‘just you’ again.”

“You know,” Harvey muses, “one of the best ways to end a panic attack is distraction. I assume that was your goal with the dinner tangent, not making me tear up over sauerkraut.” He rolls his eyes.

“You’re right.”

“Got any other ideas for distracting me?”

“I have a few,” Mike whispers, leaning in for a kiss.

* * *

Harvey wakes up naturally– not because of a nightmare, or because of a clamor right outside his door. When he opens his eyes, he finds Mike lying beside him, propping himself up on an elbow to shade Harvey from the sunlight.

_You going to pull a Brooks?_

“Hey,” Mike says, looking back at him with eyes holding all the blue of the sky, “you want to go back to sleep?”

_Not today, Gallo._

“Yeah, maybe,” he murmurs.

“Should I sing you back to sleep?”

“Depends. Do you suck?”

“You won’t know until you hear me.”

“Fine,” he sighs, “inflict a song upon me.”

Mike beams and launches into “L-O-V-E.” He’s no Nat King Cole, yet Harvey wouldn’t trade him for all the radios in the world. As he drifts back off to sleep, Mike finishes the song and moves on to one by the Spinners.

 _There’s always a chance_  
_A tiny spark will remain, yeah_  
_And sparks turn into flames_  
_And love can burn once again, but I know you know_  
_Whenever you call me, I’ll be there_  
_Whenever you want me, I’ll be there_  
_Whenever you need me, I’ll be there_  
_I’ll be around_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Again, many, many thanks to statusquo_ergo for her support through this fic. If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend you go check out her fics about Danbury as well.
> 
> Written for Suits 100's 7th prompt: "(as gruesome as it is) I’d like to see Mike (or Harvey, if the taker sees fit) to serve the full [two years] in prison. No getting out of jail early cards in this one. How does he deal? What happens after?"
> 
> Some factual notes:
> 
> Harvey’s Special Housing Unit is based on the one where Mike stayed in canon, graffitied cross and all. I’m not sure whether Mike’s really was Unit #5, but it was in fact across the hall from #4. Main differences- the mattress was more blue in canon than charcoal gray, the light was not dysfunctional, the sink may not have been attached to the toilet, and not all the units had windows on their doors.
> 
> Information on SHU reviews, hearings and property limits comes largely from [here](https://www.bop.gov/policy/progstat/5270.11.pdf). I took creative license and let Harvey use the administrative segregation property limits, even when he was in disciplinary segregation. In real life, people in disciplinary segregation would probably be allowed much less personal property.
> 
> I’m not actually positive the Sony SRP Radio listed on the Danbury commissary list is the SRF-39FP, but I _think_ it is. You can see this radio [here](http://gizmodo.com/the-sony-srf-39fp-the-audio-player-of-choice-in-prison-1504910322). You can read more about it [here](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-ipod-of-prison).
> 
> If a real New York lawyer pled guilty to felony fraud, he’d immediately lose his license because New York considers fraud a state crime and automatically disbars everyone who is convicted of a state felony. Funnily enough, Suits sends Mike to federal prison, which means fraud in the Suitsverse is probably a federal crime and not a state crime. Thus, Harvey gets to argue that he shouldn’t be disbarred instead of automatically being kicked out.
> 
> Information on anxiety, PTSD, and the catastrophic psychological damage of solitary confinement is from several sources, including [this study](http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1362&context=law_journal_law_policy).


End file.
